Tag Archives: #Education

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Regardless of what the #woke want to believe, the numbers don’t lie

At some point, you’d think that even the wokest of the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading would understand the facts. The tweet screencaptured on the right gives you the basics, and you can read the whole story here. From the Portland Press-Herald:

Transgender girl makes history with victory at cross country regional

Soren Stark-Chessa, a sophomore at Maine Coast Waldorf School, controlled the Class C South girls’ race from start to finish, with support from the crowd.

by Steve Craig, Staff Writer | Saturday, October 21, 2023

CUMBERLAND — A 15-year-old runner on Saturday became the first transgender athlete to win a regional high school cross country championship in Maine.

Soren Stark-Chessa, a sophomore at Maine Coast Waldorf School in Freeport, won the Class C South girls’ title at Twin Brook Recreation Area, completing the 3.1-mile course in 19 minutes, 17.78 seconds – a minute and 22 seconds faster than the runner-up.

“I think I came out a little strong but just kept pushing through it and I’m happy with it,” Stark-Chessa said of her race.

As you can see, the Press-Herald apparently follows a stylebook which specifies the pronouns favored by the person to whom they refer, even if those pronouns are an abject lie.

The numbers don’t lie: 1:22 faster than the first real girl running is a huge gap, 7.13%. While young Mr Stark-Chessa beat the runner-up by 82.51 seconds, the gap between second and third place, both real girls, was just 18.82 seconds. Continue reading →

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Kendra Brooks just can’t handle the truth!

We reported yesterday evening on Philadelphia City Councilwoman Kendra Brooks and her posturing in front of Edward T Steel Elementary School. It was noted that Steel Elementary, which both defeated mayoral candidate Helen Gym Flaherty and she touted as a victory for public schools, as Mrs Flaherty fought successfully to keep from being privatized, but Steel Elementary is ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, in which 8% of students tested grade-level proficient in reading, and a whopping 1% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math. Perhaps, we suggested, keeping Steel Elementary public rather than charter wasn’t that great a move. After all, it’s difficult to imagine that students could perform much worse than they already have!

It would be, of course, unfair to write an article on Miss Brooks and not let her know that I had done so, so I tweeted a reply to her. I do not know if Miss Brooks read the linked article, but, as of 8:18 AM EDT, Twitter analytics indicates that there were three clicks on the link, along with three profile visits generated by my reply.

Well, I got my reply from the Councilwoman, in a manner that doesn’t really surprise me. 🙂

So funny! Miss Brooks is a member of the Philadelphia City Council, which makes her a person of some political power, and one would think that information on the public school she touted ought to be important to her. But, rather than worrying about Steel Elementary’s, a school she said her daughter attended, poor performance, Miss Brooks chose instead to stick her head in the sand. Political posturing trumps actually doing something to help.

I attended the public schools. When I was in Mt Sterling High School, 1967 to 1971, we had exactly one teacher who had his master’s; all of the others topped out with baccalaureate degrees. A 1937 WPA/CCC building, we had no air conditioning, the teachers had no union, the building was heated by radiators via a boiler in the basement, there had been no cafeteria until the Elementary School across the street was built in 1961, there was no school bus service, and this was well before personal computers and that internet thingy Al Gore invented. Yet somehow, some way, everyone who was graduated could actually read his diploma. We had no metal detectors or security guards, and boys traded pocketknives and argued whether K-Bar or Buck made better blades, on the school’s right front portico, at the top of the tall steps. Oddly enough, no one was stabbed, nor was anyone worried about it. If there was a fight in the parking lot, as happened at least a few times, it was two guys, with a circle of spectators cheering on one or the other, and the odds were good that at least one, if not both of them, had knives in their pockets, but the knives never came out.

Of course, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which endorsed Mrs Flaherty for Mayor, which supports Miss Brooks, would be absolutely aghast at all of that. Why, they’d sputter, teachers have to get their master’s degrees within just a few years, but it has to be asked: why, if advanced degrees are so necessary, did a small-town school in the South do a better job in actually educating its students when every teacher but one had only a bachelor’s degree?

Is it possible, just possible, that everything that the teachers’ unions have been pushing is exactly the wrong thing?

That, of course, is the kind of question that Working Families Party politicians like Kendra Brooks does not want asked, and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers most certainly don’t want answered. They just can’t handle the truth!

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Kendra Brooks fouls up. Perhaps celebrating a clearly failing public school isn't a good look

Kendra Brooks is an at-large Philadelphia City Councilwoman, who won on the Working Families Party line, with the WFB being even further left than the already far-left Democrats. She has also been affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America.

Upon hearing that Commonwealth Partners will be supporting pro-school choice candidates, Miss Brooks tweeted:

My path to politics began when school privatizers tried to close my daughter’s school. We fought privatization then and will keep fighting it now.

No amount of GOP money can buy community support.

Her tweet included a photo of the Councilwoman, her arms defiantly crossed, and a stern look on her face, in front of the Edward T Steel Elementary School.

We’ve reported on Steel Elementary before, because then Democratic mayoral candidate Helen Gym Flaherty campaigned in front of that school, proudly proclaiming that she saved the school from ‘going charter.’ Miss Brooks, a strong supporter of Mrs Flaherty’s, then tweeted:

I met @HelenGymPHL over a decade ago when my daughter’s school was going to be privatized. We were a few moms saying we want something greater. We DESERVE something better.

That’s what her education plan is about. That’s why I’m standing here today because since day one, she’s been fighting for communities like mine. And winning.

To this day, Edward T. Steel Elementary is a public school.

Being a numbers kind of guy, I did some research. Yes, Steel Elementary is still a Philadelphia public school. But how good a school is it? Steel Elementary is ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, in which 8% of students tested grade-level proficient in reading, and a whopping 1% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math. Perhaps keeping Steel Elementary public rather than charter wasn’t that great a move. After all, it’s difficult to imagine that students could perform much worse than they already have!

Fortunately, Mrs Flaherty finished third in the Democratic mayoral primary, and her public school teacher supported campaign simply failed.

The primary was three months ago, but apparently Miss Brooks hasn’t yet learned the lesson: if you pose in front of, and celebrate a particular public school, maybe, just maybe, you ought to have some idea of just what the school’s performance is, because there will always be someone like me who will check the numbers.

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If you’re scared, say you’re scared! But don't be afraid of stupid stuff.

That things get stupid following a mass shooting, such as the one in Louisville, or school shooting like the one in Nashville, is expected. But there’s a point at which stupidity gets squared. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Parents say Bala Cynwyd fifth graders texted about who should be shot in the next school shooting

“Everyday i think of school shootings and hope the most people die,” one student wrote, according to a screenshot of an exchange shared by two parents.

by Maddie Hanna | Friday, April 14, 2023

Three weeks ago, parents say fifth graders at Bala Cynwyd Middle School had a conversation over text about school shootings.

Bala Cynwyd is not exactly a depressed area. The mean household income is $128,94574.9% of residents 25 or older have at least a baccalaureate degree, 76.8% of homes are occupied by their owners with a median value of $568,200. 77.1% of the population are non-Hispanic whites.

These aren’t disadvantaged kids stuck in a rotten school. Unlike the disasters that Philadelphia Mayoral candidate Helen Gym Flaherty champions, Bala Cynwyd Middle School ranks 8th best out of 877 middle schools in Pennsylvania, with 87% of students ranked as grade-level proficient in reading, and 71% in math.

“Everyday i think of school shootings and hope the most people die,” one student wrote, according to a screenshot of the exchange shared by two parents. The exchange continued: “I hope the following people will get shot,” before listing names that were blacked out.

The parents who provided the exchange to the Inquirer said they knew who the listed names were — because one was their child.

The Lower Merion School District has not informed most parents of the details of the incident — referring in a message to the community Thursday to “text messages that included threatening language.”

Lower Merion police assisted the district in investigating, “and concluded that no credible threat to the safety of the school community ever existed related to those text messages,” Acting Superintendent Megan Shafer said in the message Thursday.

I turn 70 in just a few more days, but I can still remember some of the [insert slang term for feces here] that my classmates and I said when we were middle school aged. Sixth, seventh, and eighth graders aren’t exactly the type for serious plotting.

To reach that conclusion, Shafer said the district followed its threat assessment process — using a model developed by University of Virginia researchers involving “multiple data points” and “various staff members and outside agencies, including law enforcement when indicated.”

That isn’t assurance enough, said the parents who spoke to the Inquirer, who asked not to be named to protect the anonymity of their child. They said other parents were similarly frustrated following a town hall Wednesday night with Shafer and Bala Cynwyd’s principal, Jeffrey Hunter, during which the parents said administrators disclosed that students involved in sending the messages would be allowed to return to school Monday.

“If you’re going to deem this to not be a credible threat …there still needs to be a little more transparency as to why parents should feel safe with these children being readmitted,” one of the parents said.

Paranoia much?

Look, I get it: with all of the sensationalized stories in the media, some parents are just panicked. But just a little bit of self-awareness, of remembering the [insert slang term for feces here] that they said when they were those ages, ought to bring them to the realization that middle schoolers just say stuff, silly stuff, and stupid stuff. Heck, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades are when kids are going through puberty, and that only increases the stupidity.

Our society has been permeated with fear, oftentimes unreasoning fear. Don’t give in to fear.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

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Once again, Joe Biden thinks that girls can be boys and boys can be girls

With several conservative states imposing common sense restrictions on the participation of males in women’s sports, it’s little surprise that the #woke Biden Administration wants to overrule them. From The New York Times:

School Sports Cannot ‘Categorically’ Ban Transgender Athletes, Under Biden Proposal

The proposed rules under Title IX would give schools flexibility for “fairness in competition” or for the possibility that participation could lead to injury.

By Sarah Mervosh and Remy Tumin | Thursday, April 6, 2023 | Updated 4:47 PM EDT

UPenn Women’s Swim Team, via Instagram. It isn’t difficult to pick out the one man male in a women’s bikini top. Click to enlarge.

The Biden administration proposed a rule change on Thursday that would forbid schools from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes from teams that are consistent with their gender identities, but offered some flexibility for “fairness in competition” and other exceptions.

What does “fairness in competition” mean, and just who will be judging whether a particular local decision excluding the ‘transgendered’ from a particular women’s or girls’ sport for “fairness in competition” reasons can stand?

The proposed rule change would make “categorically” banning all transgender students from athletic teams that are consistent with their gender identities a violation of Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal funding.

But it would also allow K-12 schools and universities to limit the participation of transgender students when including them could undermine fairness or potentially lead to sports-related injuries.

“Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination,” Miguel Cardona, the U.S. Secretary of Education, said in a statement.

Also see: Deanna Fisher: Trans Violence Is Acceptable To The Left

There are a few, few sports in which males and females can compete on an even basis, sports such as curling or a university rifle team. But every sport in which physical strength, size, speed, quickness or endurance make a difference would mean that males who believe they are female are going to have a significant physical advantage over real females.

In one sense, this proposed regulation recognizes that there really are physical differences between males and females, and that those physical differences make a difference in sports.

The Department of Education said the proposal was meant to offer “much needed clarity” about how public schools, as well as colleges and universities, should handle an issue that has led to intense and often vociferous debate, particularly when it comes to the question of women’s sports.

That “intense and often vociferous debate” has occurred where it should, among the public at large and our elected representatives.

Under the proposed rules, which must undergo a period of public comment, elementary school students would generally be able to participate in school sports consistent with their gender identity. But for older students, questions of fairness and physicality could come into play.

No one really cares if boys and girls play kickball together in elementary school, but puberty changes everything. It would be nice if we had a bit more common sense in our federal government when it comes to subjects like these.

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When public officials are too weak-willed to do the right thing

The Catholic Church’s handling of sexually abusive priests has been an enormous scandal, almost as bad as the abusive priests themselves. In far, far, far too many instances, the Church ‘handled’ the problem priests, when the dioceses became aware of them, not by reporting such to law enforcement or removing them from any duties which brought them in contact with minors, but by transferring them to other parishes, without telling parishioners why, in the frequently vain hope that the priest had somehow been reformed and wouldn’t try it again.

In Philadelphia, then-District Attorney Seth Williams brought Monsignor William Lynn to trial not for abusing any victims himself:

His trial attracted a packed courtroom full of press, priest-abuse victims and outraged Catholics, along with a few church loyalists. Lynn, the longtime secretary for clergy, was accused of sending a known predator — named on a list of problem priests he had prepared for Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua — to an accuser’s northeast Philadelphia parish.

The trial judge allowed nearly two dozen other priest-abuse victims to testify about abuse they had suffered in the archdiocese over a half century. An appeals court later said their weeks of testimony over uncharged acts were unfair to Lynn — who some saw as a scapegoat for the church, given that the bishops and cardinals above him were never charged.

Also see: Fr Gordon MacRae: Msgr William Lynn is Free and a Prosecutor is “Disgusted”

By the time of Msgr Lynn’s trial, Cardinal Bevilacqua was retired, suffering from dementia, and was unable to defend himself; that is why he was never charged.

The jury found that Msgr Lynn allowed Fr Edward Avery, who had a history of sexually abusing children, to live in a Northeast Philadelphia rectory, where he later assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy. Fr Avery pleaded guilty in the 1999 attack and was sentenced to five years in state prison.

Finally, after two separate appeals by Msgr Lynn, vacating his convictions, current District Attorney Larry Krasner, who had nothing to do with Msgr Lynn’s trial, finally offered a plea deal to end the whole farce, and Msgr Lynn pleaded no contest to “a charge of failing to turn over records to the 2002 grand jury,” and saw no further penalty; he had already served three years in state prison for the offenses of which he had been improperly convicted.

Now, why do I bring this up? It was a paragraph from this article , referred to me by Kirby McCain:

The boy was transferred out of Richneck and placed in a different institution within the district, but was allowed to return for the 2022-23 school year when he was enrolled in Zwerner’s class.

Here’s the article:

Virginia teacher shot by 6-year-old files $40M lawsuit after she says school ignored warnings

The lawsuit mentions new details about the boy, who is identified as John Doe, and an alleged pattern of troubling behavior.

by Erik Ortiz | Monday, April 3, 2023 | 7:30 AM EDT| Updated 6:10 PM EDT

Abigail Zwerner. Photo by Carlos Bernate for NBC News.

Almost three months after Virginia teacher Abigail Zwerner was shot by a 6-year-old student, she filed a $40 million lawsuit Monday alleging school administrators shrugged off multiple warnings from staff and students who believed the boy had a gun and posed an imminent threat on the day of the shooting, and did so knowing the child “had a history of random violence.”

The Jan. 6 shooting of Zwerner at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News stunned the country as police announced the child’s actions were intentional. The student shot her with a 9 mm handgun while she sat at a reading table in their first-grade classroom, according to officials.

The injured educator’s complaint, filed in the Newport News Circuit Court, says Richneck Assistant Principal Ebony Parker chose to “breach her assumed duty” to protect Zwerner, “despite multiple reports that a firearm was on school property and likely in possession of a violent individual.”

What follows is a fairly lengthy list of safety warnings ignored, which can be boiled down to this:

Lawyers for Zwerner said Monday on NBC’s “TODAY” show that the school leadership knew of at least three separate warnings that the boy was believed to have a gun and some other students reported seeing it.

The NBC News article is not behind a paywall, so you can easily see them yourself. But this is the important part:

School knew of boy’s behavioral issues

The lawsuit mentions new details about the boy, who is identified as John Doe, and an alleged pattern of troubling behavior.

While in kindergarten at Richneck in the 2021-22 school year, the boy strangled and choked a teacher and was removed from the school, according to the complaint.

That same school year, the boy also pulled up the dress of a female student who had fallen on the playground, the complaint says, and “began to touch the child inappropriately until reprimanded by a teacher.”

The boy was transferred out of Richneck and placed in a different institution within the district, but was allowed to return for the 2022-23 school year when he was enrolled in Zwerner’s class.

He was placed on a modified schedule last fall after “chasing students around the playground with a belt in an effort to whip them with it, as well as cursing at staff and teachers,” according to the complaint. At least one parent was also required to attend school with him daily “because of his violent tendencies.”

“Teachers’ concerns with John Doe’s behavior was regularly brought to the attention of Richneck Elementary School administration, and the concerns were always dismissed,” the suit says. “Often when he was taken to the school office to address his behavior, he would return to the classroom shortly thereafter with some type of reward, such as a piece of candy.”

Why was this child even allowed to be in a public school? Yes, I know he was only six years old, but he was clearly violent and out of control. Despite his age, this boy should have been institutionalized in some form. Yes, the assistant principal allegedly ignored notifications that the boy had a gun the day of the shooting, but the truth is that he should not have been in that school in the first place. That he brought a gun to school was simply the last manifestation of the problem; the problem is that he was wholly uncivilized and the teachers and administrators knew it. He was assaulting teachers and students long before he brought the gun to school.

I get it: the brat cannot be criminally charged because he’s only six years old, but, like Nikolas Cruz at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the administrators didn’t do anything about the ‘student’ because they were too soft-hearted and soft-headed and didn’t want to scar the poor dear. They simply did not do their duty to get these savages out of school entirely.

So, what will happen?

Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn told NBC News last month that he would not seek charges against the boy, citing his age and inability to adequately understand the legal system, but said he was still weighing whether he might hold any adults criminally liable.

The family of the boy said in a statement in January that the weapon was “secured” in the home and that they have “always been committed to responsible gun ownership and keeping firearms out of the reach of children.”

The family also said the boy has an acute disability and was receiving the “treatment he needs” under a court-ordered temporary detention at a medical facility.

A bit late for that! Note that the “temporary detention at a medical facility” was ordered by the court, after the boy’s criminality became publicly known; if the school system had ever sought such a thing before he shot his teacher, it has not been reported. But my question is: if the Commonwealth’s Attorney is still considering whether any adults should be charged, is he weighing this only concerning the little savage’s parents, or are the school administrators who failed to take any serious action also being considered for charges? That is what happened to Msgr Lynn, and if Seth Williams went overly broad in his prosecution, and Judge Teresa Sarmina allowed it, such that the convictions were thrown out on appeal, Msgr Lynn and Cardinal Bevilacqua still did nothing positive to stop the sexual abuse of minors in the Archdiocese.

Msgr Lynn’s trial and convictions should have put the fear of the law into other diocesan officials; charging the school administrators in Newport News who took so many wrong decisions in this case would send a message to schools everywhere to not just ignore threats such as this kid, or they just might wind up behind bars themselves.

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Trying too hard? The Philadelphia Inquirer tries to put lipstick on a pig.

As we have previously reported, the shooting of seven people near Strawberry Mansion High School has led parents of students at another school whose children were going to be transferred to Strawberry Mansion due to asbestos remediation to protest that vigorously, claiming that the Mansion was inherently unsafe. When the transfer actually happened, only 28 students actually showed up at Mansion.

So now The Philadelphia Inquirer is telling us what a great school Strawberry Mansion is!

Strawberry Mansion High School continues to fight an old reputation. But students say the school is an oasis.

“We will meet our students where they are, and really work to get them to their highest potential,” Strawberry Mansion Principal Brian McCracken said.

by Kristen A Graham | Monday, March 13, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

When Patience Wilson shares with people that she attends Strawberry Mansion High School, they often shake their heads and tell her all the bad things they’ve heard about her school.

But Wilson, a smiley 17-year-old senior, knows the real Mansion, the one behind the hasty headlines and deep-seated stereotypes.

The real Mansion, she says, is different: a place where students can start on a path to a building trades career, partner with nonprofits, spend their lunchtime in clubs and activities, and have access to trips, career and technical education programs, college classes, and adults who surround them with expectations and supports and love — no matter where they’re coming from or how long they’re able to stay.

“People usually judge us based on what’s happened in the past. But they’re not focusing on what’s happening right now,” said Wilson.

Reporter Kristen Graham focuses on Philadelphia schools, and it’s a good thing that the newspaper has someone who does that with such a large public school system. Mrs Graham then began to tell us about the school’s problems:

For years, Strawberry Mansion has fought on several fronts: against the challenges of its surroundings (the neighborhood has the highest number of shootings this year in the city; a full 52% of children under 18 in the immediate area live in poverty, according to Philadelphia and federal data), against a mismatch between available funding and concentrated student need.

It’s coped with a system that, because it emphasizes choice, has made things tougher for comprehensive high schools, which accept all students who walk in the door. Less than 10% of the students who live in Mansion’s attendance zone go to the school, according to district data, and those who do tend to be the most vulnerable.

I’m actually impressed that these two paragraphs were placed where they were, fifth and sixth in the story, because much of the remainder of the story is extremely positive about the school itself. But when Mrs Graham tells us that the neighborhood has the highest number of shootings in the city so far this year — and plenty of them in previous years — one thing is obvious: the concerns that the Building 21 parents raised are valid: it doesn’t matter how great a school might be if the students are getting shot!

There are several more paragraphs telling readers — and the newspaper didn’t restrict it to subscribers only, so if you don’t have too many Inquirer story reads, you can access it online — what the school has been doing to try to be better, almost to the point of pro-Mansion propaganda, Mrs Graham comes to this point:

On paper, Mansion’s statistics are startling: By the district’s measure, last year, 41% of the school’s ninth graders were on track to graduation. Just 9% met state standards in reading, 2% in math.

But the intense needs of Mansion’s students mean those numbers require lots of context. Consider the student who’s never been identified as requiring special-education services but who reads at a second-grade level. Or the teen whose attendance and grades are spotty but recently had been removed from his family’s care and now lives with a foster family, whom the school can’t reach.

If fewer than half, barely 41%, of freshmen are on a path to graduation, a figure I find questionable if “(j)ust 9% met state standards in reading, 2% in math,” it’s difficult for me to see how the school is doing its job. If there are students, in a high school, who need “special education services” going unnoticed by teachers when reading at the “second-grade level,” how are readers supposed to believe that the teachers are doing a good job? How would the parents of the displaced Building 21 students ever think that Strawberry Mansion High School is a good place to send their kids even without the question of violence in the neighborhood?

You know, I get it: Mrs Graham wanted to inform readers of the good things happening at Mansion, and pointed out several things that are supposed to be good, about vocational education to get some students into trades which don’t require college, several things telling readers how hard the school under principal Brian McCracken is trying. But when fewer “than 10% of the students who live in Mansion’s attendance zone go to the school,” it’s an inescapable fact: parents and students, people who are most familiar with the neighborhood and the school, are voting with their SEPTA passes, voting against the place. With fewer than 10% of the students in the school’s attendance zone going there, is it any surprise that the parents of the Building 21 students don’t want their kids there?

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More public school failure in Kentucky

Linda Blackford is a long-time columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, and, despite being a long-time Kentuckian, she’s liberal to her core. We have previously noted the newspaper’s endorsements, and they are all to the left:

The voters of the Sixth District, and of Kentucky as a whole, rejected every one of the newspaper’s endorsements.

Come 2023, they’ll endorse Governor Andy Beshear, he who unconstitutionally suspended the free exercise of religion and freedom of peaceable assembly in 2020, for re-election, and in 2024, whichever Democrat runs for the Sixth District seat, assuming he’s not a kook like this year.

So I’ll admit it: even though I am subscribing to what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal, I don’t usually pay much attention to Mrs Blackford’s columns. I did, however read this one, in which she pushed for the Fayette County School Board to select “a person of color who understands what many of our students face in school”, as the replacement for Christy Morris, who resigned her position. The usual race-based drivel followed, and was mostly unremarkable and unimportant. There was, however, one very important statistic given:

Students of color make up about 53 percent of students, while about 48.5 percent of all students are considered low income.

Really? The Fayette County Public Schools are 53% “students of color”? According to the Census Bureau, a full 70.0% of Fayette County’s population are non-Hispanic white, with another 2.8% being white, but Hispanic as well. Perhaps they are being counted as “students of color”, “brown” perhaps, the way the left do these days. But it has to be asked: if Fayette County’s population are 70% non-Hispanic white, why are the public schools majority “students of color”?

Let’s face it: private schools are expensive! I know, as we put our girls in parochial schools for part of the time. Sayre School is the hoitiest and toitiest of the private schools in Lexington, with the high school tuition being $26,625 per year. That’s more than tuition at the University of Kentucky’s College of Law!

Lexington Catholic High School’s tuition is significantly lower, at $11,170 for one student, if the family are Catholic parishioners, and $13,690 for non-Catholics. That’s a significant chunk of change that people have been willing to pay rather than send their kids to the Fayette County public schools. In very liberal Lexington — Fayette Countians gave 59.25% of their votes to Joe Biden in 2020, in a year when Kentuckians as a whole voted to re-elect President Trump, 62.09% to 36.15% — much of the white population have rejected the public schools.

And today, the state Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a Republican plan to assist poorer families to afford private schools.

Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of the bill was overridden with a slim 51-member majority in the House.

In his veto message, Beshear said the bill would “harm public education in Kentucky by taking money away from public schools.” In a post to Twitter on Thursday, the governor took his message a step further. He compared the EOA law to the newly passed law funding charter schools in Kentucky.

“Today’s ruling by the Kentucky Supreme Court couldn’t be more clear: state funding for private or charter schools is unconstitutional – period. It’s time for the General Assembly to invest in our public schools, our teachers and our children,” Beshear wrote.

Fayette County Public Schools argued against the law, saying that it stripped resources away from its schools and students.

The Kentucky Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, celebrated the ruling.

“This decision protects the power of the people to decide important questions of public education policy and holds the legislature to account to uphold their oath to support and defend the Kentucky Constitution… We simply can’t afford to support two different education systems — one private and one public — on the taxpayers’ dime, and this ruling supports that concern. This decision is proof that the courts continue to serve as an important check against legislative overreach,” KEA President Eddie Campbell wrote.

So, what do we have? The state Supreme Court’s ruling that the law was unconstitutional may well be fundamentally correct based on the state constitution, but the fact remains that, in the Commonwealth’s wealthiest county, about as many families who can afford to send their children someplace other than the Fayette County public schools are choosing to do so. Even before the law was passed — it never took effect because Franklin County Judge Phil Shepherd, a Democrat and stooge of Governor Beshear, issued an injunction against it — parents in Lexington who could afford it were voting against the public schools with their private school choices. They were still being taxed to support the public schools, but sure didn’t want to send their own kids there.

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Just because a public school library does not carry sexually-charged books does not mean that such books are banned

The image to the right is a screen capture if the results I got when I Google searched for libraries in Bucks County. This section of the map shows other libraries.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is, of course, aghast that concerned parents might not want their impressionable children exposed to certain materials, primarily sexually explicit materials, and things which glorify what the federal government has sometimes referred to as “minority sexual attractions.”

A parade against book-banning in Doylestown, as Central Bucks School District targets ‘sexualized content’

Bans, restrictions and challenges to books have reached levels not seen in decades

by Jeff Gammage | Sunday, September 25, 2022

One marcher was costumed as the cover of Lawn Boy, the Jonathan Evison book that was banned for its gay and lesbian content and because it was considered to be sexually explicit.

Another was outfitted as All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, which was banned for similar reasons.

Others wore the oversize dust jackets of other books that have been targeted in libraries and school districts for supposedly inappropriate content.

Note the use of language by Jeff Gammage, the Inquirer reporter: “supposedly inappropriate content.” Any responsible editor would have blue-penciled that loaded phrase right away, but there is no evidence that what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. has any responsible editors.

The Central Bucks school district is prohibiting their school libraries from carrying books and other material which are sexually explicit and age-inappropriate, because a great many parents do not want their children exposed to such. But the school district controls only the public school libraries; the ones listed in the screen capture are the Bucks County free public library system, and they can carry whatever books and material they wish. If some student wants to read All Boys Aren’t Blue he can check the public library, or order it from Amazon. The question is whether the school system should be exposing public school students — and Pennsylvania, like every other state, has a compulsory education law — to a book which details and attempts to glorify the experiences of the author “growing up as a queer Black man in Plainfield, New Jersey.”

In addition to describing Johnson’s own experience, it directly addresses Black queer boys who may not have someone in their life with similar experiences.

Perhaps, just perhaps, some parents do not want their sons and daughters exposed to that.

The district superintendent said the measure would ensure that students read “age-appropriate material,” but civil rights groups have been alarmed.

“No one is saying that every book is or should be appropriate for every child,” said parade organizer Kate Nazemi, a parent with two children in the Central Bucks district, one of the state’s largest. “Librarians and teachers work actively to find the right books for the right kids. They are educators. And they’re being treated like they’re not.”

Well, that’s just it. As we have previously noted, child rearing is the responsibility of parents, and not of the school system or of teachers. More, the public schools and their employees should be subject to the wishes of the taxpayers and parents who fund them, but the “educators” are acting as though they should be supervising the parents, rather than the other way around.

Nazemi, a member of Advocates for Inclusive Education, a coalition that opposes extremism, said district parents have the power to restrict the books seen by their own child. But they shouldn’t have the right, she said, to have a book removed for nearly 18,000 district students.

Of course, once the students are past the schoolhouse door, the parents aren’t present to see what library books their children check out, are reading, or even having passed to them by another student or a teacher. And those students who want to read Lawn Boy can easily get it.

Mr Gammage let his bias creep into his supposedly-straight-news article again, when he described Advocates for Inclusive Education as a coalition that opposes extremism. Their own website has a page The Issues, and all of the issues they have listed stem from a very politically liberal attitude about what schools should teach students about normal and homosexual sex.

Discounting LGBTQ Children’s Social & Emotional Needs
We believe school is a place where children should feel safe to learn and grow together, and where all students are given the tools they need to excel. LGBTQ youth are a legally protected marginalized group who have historically suffered discrimination and therefore need supportive and affirming school policies to ensure their protection.

Issue 1: Affirming Symbols of Support
The Pride Flag has been identified as an effective tool in making students feel supported and welcome in the school environment. We don’t believe it is a divisive and political symbol.

Of course it’s a political symbol! It is a symbol which takes the political position that homosexuality and transgenderism are things to be supported and approved, and it is actively hostile to those who believe that homosexuality is just plain wrong. The public schools should be taking no position, either way, on this.

We are keeping an eye on draft Policy 321 that codifies pride flag removal and more (introduced on 9/14.)

Issue 2: Affirming Names and Pronouns
Some schools in CB are rolling out a new “gender identification procedure” where teachers are not allowed to call a student by their preferred/affirming name unless their parents/guardians have approved this change in the student information database, or the requested name is contained within their name, like Sam for Samantha.

Students must feel safe to learn. We believe this directive will adversely affect academic performance, school attendance, and lead to increases in anxiety and depression.

If “students must feel safe to learn,” I have to ask: do the Advocates care about those normal girls who do not feel safe when boys “identifying” as girls are allowed in the girls’ restrooms and locker rooms? Or doesn’t that feeling of unsafety count?

One wonders what the Advocates for Inclusive Education would say if a student persisted in calling a ‘transgender’ student who wanted to be called Lia by his previous name of William. Would the Advocates state that he should be punished? Jared Jennings, the boy who thinks he’s a girl and goes by the name “Jazz”, whined to Oprah Winfrey:

For the most part boys aren’t really accepting of me because I am transgender and therefore not many guys have crushes on me at my school. They think if they like me they will be called gay by their friends because they like another ‘boy.’

Clearly, there are at least some people who wouldn’t accept young Mr Jennings’ claim that he was actually a girl.

Note that, in every instance, the Advocates for Inclusive Education are pushing policies to normalize homosexuality and transgenderism. Some of us, myself most certainly included, see pushing those types of things as extremism on the left.

Far down in the Inquirer article was a single paragraph which proved that books aren’t banned:

Glenda Childs, owner of the Doylestown Bookshop, set up two displays of banned books in her store, proudly offering them for sale.

I absolutely support Miss Childs and her right to sell what she calls “banned books”. Given that the store website lists Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls as a “banned book,” I’d say that her definition is rather expansive, but that’s another subject.

But Miss Childs and her bookstore are private businesses, which may do as the owners choose; the government may not prohibit her from doing so. Public school libraries? Those are government institutions, and yes, they are subject to the decisions of the public. Other than the Library of Congress, no library in the United States, public or private, carries everything that is published; librarians have to take choices based on what is available, and what they can afford, concerning what they will and will not purchase and carry.

Public school libraries have a special duty, because they have what is, in effect, a captive audience, students in attendance because they are required to be there, by law. And they already take decisions based on content: how many carry Mein Kampf, or, Heaven forfend!, that great American classic, Huckleberry Finn? Do the Advocates for Inclusive Education bemoan schools which do not carry those very famous books, or would the Advocates say that, hey, if you want to read Huckleberry Finn, it’s easily available on Amazon?

The left were horrified, horrified! when some conservatives, looking at the overly-sexualized presentations in support of homosexuality and transgenderism, started calling them “groomers.” But it is reasonable to ask: what purpose other than “grooming” do they have, in their attempts to normalize homosexuality and transgenderism? Tolerance is one thing, but the constant pushing of those subjects is something else entirely.

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↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.